arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Keith Burns.
For any rank 1 nonpositively curved surface $M$, it was proved by Burns-Climenhaga-Fisher-Thompson that for any $q<1$, there exists a unique equilibrium state $\mu_q$ for $q\varphi^u$, where $\varphi^u$ is the geometric potential. We show that as $q\to 1-$, the weak$^*$ limit of $\mu_q$ is the restriction of the Liouville measure to the regular set.
We study the one parameter family of potential functions $qφ^u$ associated with the geometric potential $φ^u$ for the geodesic flow of a compact rank 1 surface of nonpositive curvature. For $q<1$ it is known that there is a unique equilibrium state associated with $qφ^u$, and it has full support. For $q > 1$ it is known that an invariant measure is an equilibrium state if and only if it is supported on the singular set. We study the critical value $q=1$ and show that the ergodic equilibrium states are either the restriction to the regular set of the Liouville measure, or measures supported on the singular set. In particular, when~$q = 1$, there is a unique ergodic equilibrium state that gives positive measure to the regular set.
The paper surveys open problems and questions related to geodesics defined by Riemannian, Finsler, semi Riemannian and magnetic structures on manifolds.
We study geodesic flows over compact rank 1 manifolds and prove that sufficiently regular potential functions have unique equilibrium states if the singular set does not carry full pressure. In dimension 2, this proves uniqueness for scalar multiples of the geometric potential on the interval $(-\infty,1)$, which is optimal. In higher dimensions, we obtain the same result on a neighborhood of 0, and give examples where uniqueness holds on all of $\mathbb{R}$. For general potential functions $φ$, we prove that the pressure gap holds whenever $φ$ is locally constant on a neighborhood of the singular set, which allows us to give examples for which uniqueness holds on a $C^0$-open and dense set of Hölder potentials.
We are motivated by a problem about running: If a race was completed in an average pace of P minutes per mile, is there necessarily some mile of the race that was run in exactly P minutes? The answer is no. We explain why, and describe the history of this celebrated problem, known as the Universal Chord Theorem. We also clarify and streamline the proof of a more powerful result by Heinz Hopf from 1937.
We establish exponential mixing for the geodesic flow $φ_t\colon T^1S\to T^1S$ of an incomplete, negatively curved surface $S$ with cusp-like singularities of a prescribed order. As a consequence, we obtain that the Weil-Petersson flows for the moduli spaces ${\mathcal M}_{1,1}$ and ${\mathcal M}_{0,4}$ are exponentially mixing, in sharp contrast to the flows for ${\mathcal M}_{g,n}$ with $3g-3+n>1$, which fail to be rapidly mixing. In the proof, we present a new method of analyzing invariant foliations for hyperbolic flows with singularities, based on changing the Riemannian metric on the phase space $T^1S$ and rescaling the flow $φ_t$.
We show that the rate of mixing of the Weil-Petersson flow on non-exceptional (higher dimensional) moduli spaces of Riemann surfaces is at most polynomial.
We prove that the geodesic flow for the Weil-Petersson metric on the moduli space of Riemann surfaces is ergodic (in fact Bernoulli) and has finite, positive metric entropy.
We investigate the spectrum of Lyapunov exponents for the geodesic flow of a compact rank 1 surface.
A Riemannian manifold is said to be uniformly secure if there is a finite number $s$ such that all geodesics connecting an arbitrary pair of points in the manifold can be blocked by $s$ point obstacles. We prove that the number of geodesics with length $\leq T$ between every pair of points in a uniformly secure manifold grows polynomially as $T \to \infty$. We derive from this that a compact Riemannian manifold with no conjugate points whose geodesic flow has positive topological entropy is totally insecure: the geodesics between any pair of points cannot be blocked by a finite number of point obstacles.
Pugh and Shub have conjectured that essential accessibility implies ergodicity, for a $C^2$, partially hyperbolic, volume-preserving diffeomorphism. We prove this conjecture under a mild center bunching assumption, which is satsified by all partially hyperbolic systems with 1-dimensional center bundle. We also obtain ergodicity results for $C^{1+γ}$ partially hyperbolic systems.
Let $M$ be a compact $C^{\infty}$ Riemannian manifold. Given $p$ and $q$ in $M$ and $T>0$, define $n_{T}(p,q)$ as the number of geodesic segments joining $p$ and $q$ with length $\leq T$. Mañé showed that the exponential growth rate of the integral of $n_{T}(p,q)$ over $M \times M$ is the topological entropy of the geodesic flow of $M$. In the present paper we exhibit an open set of metrics on the two-sphere for which the exponential growth rate of $n_{T}(p,q$ is less than the topological entropy of the geodesic flow for a positive measure set of $(p,q)\in M\times M$. This answers in the negative questions raised by Mañé.